i would tend to agree but there are plenty of apps for which size and memory don't matter, and where you may have a big existing codebase. being able to quickly turn an existing big script to a windows exe can be a great thing in such a case.

Generally, that's true. But what happends usually is that something starts out as a quick small script, but later it grows, more features get added, etc. The end result is not really fit for a scripting language. There are more and more and more apps that are being released like that, and it seems like applications seem to run slower and slower, with a few exceptions. That's kinda wrong But offcourse there are good uses for it.

For example, a good backend program coded in for example c++, with a scriptable frontend. The reality is, very few, next to none script-based applications that I see are coded like that.